San Antonians complained to the city 527,000 times over the past year. Here's why

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San Antonio's 311 Customer Service Office gets no rest.

Every day without fail the department is pummeled with requests and complaints — 1,444 per day on average, according to data from fiscal year 2018.

Weekends? Always. Fourth of July? There were dead animals to be picked up, garbage bins to be exchanged, traffic signals needing maintenance and overgrown yards to be complained about. Christmas Day? The department was contacted 146 times about graffiti, vehicles parked in yards and more.

No matter how trivial the request or complaint might appear, someone with 311 always responds — though the complaints sometimes take several days to resolve. The office actually encourages residents to submit as many concerns as they feel necessary, offering the service through phone, web and mobile app to expand accessibility.

Each request or complaint is sent to the applicable city department to investigate and respond. Code Enforcement Services and Solid Waste Management receive the bulk of them. Together, the two account for nearly 70 percent of all complaints.

Requests can be resolved as quickly as within a few hours or in as many as several months.

San Antonio 311 data doesn't say who's complaining, but it does say who's being complained about — and one small neighborhood on the West Side, off North Ellison Drive north of Potranco Road, gets far more than its fair share of complaints.

Eight of the approximately 115 homes in the neighborhood accounted for more than 11,000 complaints from Nov 2017 through October 2018. One house on Figaro Canyon was complained about nearly 5,400 times, an average of 15 times a day. Nearly every single complaint in that neighborhood was sent to code enforcement, typically either for front or side yard parking or for right of way or sidewalk obstruction.

The homeowners were only cited if enforcement officers determined they had actually violated a code or ordinance, according to City of San Antonio Spokeswoman Ashley Alvarez.

"There are no penalties simply for having a request submitted, unless the person who is getting reported is actually violating something," she said.

The Figaro Canyon home was reported most often during the first three months of 2018, but recent months have still seen more than 100 complaints. At other homes in the neighborhood, the number of complaints dropped substantially or vanished completely for months at a time, possibly indicating the owners either figured out how to avoid complaints or moved.

Click through the slideshow to see which requests and complaints were most often made through San Antonio's 311 services.